Prince on the Run

by Guy Antibes

  “We do,” Trevor said. He pulled out his purse and gave the man more than Trevor expected the man would request.

  “Very generous, sir, very generous. Breakfast is ready downstairs. Will you be gone soon after? I can take care of the body.”

  “We will be,” Trevor said. He turned to Boxster. “Would you make sure that those at the inn take a look at Crookwell’s body?”

  “A good look, sir,” Boxster said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ~

  T revor promoted the remaining scout to lead Crookwell’s squad. That removed another threat from among the trees. They rode for two hours, getting close to where the West Moreton army had been before stopping for a break.

  “Three days,” Lightson, the scout, said before he whistled. “We don’t know how many men were staying outside Washingfalls.”

  Boxster snorted. “You should know better than that,” he said. “There was a camp we passed just outside of town. I would guess less than ten men stayed there, and they were on foot. The picket line held three horses only.”

  Trevor had to recall some of the scouting techniques to understand how Boxster could have come up with that information. Book learning didn’t get you out looking for signs of the enemy, even if the words were those of experience.

  Lightson colored. “I would have found the camp if I wasn’t stuck leading a squad,” he said.

  “But you are stuck leading a squad,” Trevor said. “Keep your eyes open and teach your men to do the same.” Trevor turned to Sergeant Sender. “You know to scout well enough to do the same, Sergeant.”

  “I will, sir,” Sender said, snapping off a salute. Trevor hoped the man was responsive and not making fun of him.

  “Good. We will need to send out four men to scout ahead. The West Moreton patrol is probably the same size as we are. Our mission is to harry them as they vacate our lands, but we will fight if we have to.”

  Sender nodded his head, looking very serious.

  “Two men from each squad. I will leave the assignments to your judgment, but we need experienced men, or we might have to bear the consequences of poor scouting.” Trevor stood up, followed by the other three.

  “We understand, sir,” Boxster said, snapping off a salute as good as Sender’s, but his was done with a hint of mockery that probably only Trevor detected.

  They mounted and headed south until stopping at a fork in the road. Lightson examined the ground for one hundred paces in both directions.

  “The army went that way,” Lightson said. “There are fragments of military boot prints in that direction.”

  “Show the men what you did and how you found the evidence,” Boxster said.

  Lightson looked to Trevor, who nodded back.

  The entire company followed Lightson, who actually showed patience as he shared his analysis as he examined evidence of the enemy’s movements. Trevor drifted along behind while Boxster stayed with the horses tied to a rope across the road.

  After the lecture, they continued down the proper fork. The four scouts found them an hour later. The ones who ranged to the east, on the righthand side, didn’t see any signs of the enemy. Still, the pair to the west not only spotted the company of West Moreton soldiers trudging along the road but heard them talk about staying in the main camp that night and eating better food than the Presidon army ate.

  That gave Trevor another chance to use Lightson’s training to evaluate the two scouts’ work. The ex-scout had little to criticize.

  They returned to Boxster and proceeded to a clearing that one of the scouts had found. The men broke out some trail rations and took another break while Trevor and his sergeants talked about strategy.

  “We are liable to run into West Moreton scouts from here on out,” Boxster said. “Do any of you have any ideas that we can discuss with the Lieutenant?”

  Trevor noticed how Boxster had just put himself in with the sergeants instead of with him. He could play along, so he didn’t say a word as a strategy was worked out. As it turned out, there wasn’t much to do at this point other than send scouts.

  As they mounted and rode closer to the slower-moving army, the West Moretons seemed to be moving directly south, which was a good thing as far as he was concerned. They wouldn’t have to do much herding of the army. In fact, from what Trevor could see, the less contact with the West Moretons, the better, but he had his orders.

  Two days later, Trevor’s company was close enough to the West Moreton army to catch up to them with an hour or so of moderate riding. Trevor was now in a perfect position to push the enemy a little faster.

  The men had undergone training each day, and they had an idea of what they were to do. All their raiding would be at night and would come from different directions. When they found a suitable camp in the middle of the woods, Trevor called all the men together.

  “From this point on, we should travel through the woods and not use the road,” Trevor said. “The forest will give us better cover, and our tracks will be harder to find. We will split up into three- or four-person groups and converge into the center an hour before dusk,” he said after examining his notes and conferring with Boxster, who was in agreement.

  This kind of patrol wasn’t as flashy as prancing up and down the roads of Red Forest, but Trevor had to admit, he enjoyed the improvisation that they had to perform as they headed south, following the West Moreton army.

  “Our operation will be opportunistic,” Trevor began. “Our job is to make life a little harder for the West Moreton army, not to fight them. We will be cutting picket line ropes and sabotaging their campsites, just around the edges. We don’t have the numbers to rescue you if caught, so let that be a caution to limit your actions to when you can slip in and slip out without being seen by the soldiers or by the sentries who will definitely be out there. If a sentry is dispatched, it will only rile up the army. It won’t take them much effort to send a small division north to engage us, and then we retreat.”

  “Like playing hide and seek?” one of the soldiers asked.

  Trevor nodded. “We start tonight. Don’t be aggressive. If you can identify their sentries, that will be good enough for me. A little at a time. We aren’t in a race with them.”

  “We act like buzzing mosquitos,” Angry Sender said.

  “We just don’t want anyone to be swatted,” Boxster said.

  Trevor stepped closer to the men. “Am I understood?” he asked.

  “We understand, sir,” the men said a little too loudly for Trevor’s comfort.

  ~

  Trevor followed behind a unit that Boxster volunteered to lead, carrying a bow and a quiver of arrows. He couldn’t see very well in the dappled moonlight, but he wanted to take a different weapon than his sword. It seemed more like something a scout would have. Boxster laughed at him for feeling that way, but Trevor didn’t care.

  The unit penetrated past at least one sentry post that Trevor could tell. The sentry didn’t seem to notice anything, but a whistle pierced the darkness and torches lit up, surrounding Boxster and his three men.

  “Drop your swords,” a voice called out from the ring of light.

  They all did as asked, even Boxster.

  Trevor counted six torches and seven men. He didn’t blame Boxster for surrendering with almost two to one odds, at least in the dark. Trevor spotted up his shots and found a position that was open to most men. He didn’t want to kill, but Trevor figured that pierced legs were acceptable to save his friends.

  He drew back the string and began the rapid firing cadence that Boxster had taught him. Five of the men were down when Boxster grabbed his sword. The other three followed, and they ran in Trevor’s direction.

  Two of the torches caught bushes on fire. Trevor stared at the small fires and pressed his lips together. He couldn’t let the actions of his men cause a forest fire and consume the very men he had made immobile.

  “Put out the fires and then retreat,” Trevor said. “Use your cloaks.” He st
epped toward the fire and was confronted by the last of the standing sentries. The man pointed his sword at Trevor.

  “Lay that down, man. We need to stop the fire to save your companions’ lives,” Trevor said.

  “You will die first,” the West Moreton man said.

  “No,” Trevor said. He pulled out his sword and almost played with the man for a few seconds before plunging his sword into the man’s thigh. “An arrow would have been better,” Trevor said as he moved past the sentry and began to bat the fire.

  One of the men collected the torches and put them out with dirt. The two burning bushes turned into four, but after a few minutes, those became glowing embers gradually dying out in the cool forest air.

  Trevor pulled the last torch from the first blaze and laid it down, away from the sentries. They might be found sooner that way.

  “Retreat,” Trevor said, leading the men away from the sentries to the west. He found he had a better sense of direction than the others, and they turned northeast and found the others huddling around a tiny campfire.

  “Everyone returned?” Trevor asked.

  The others mumbled that they did.

  “Any injuries on our side or the other?”

  There were two reports of scuffles with sentries but without deaths.

  Trevor let one of Boxster’s men tell their story.

  “The West Moretons killed my brother,” one of the other men said. “You should have put them to death for trespassing on Presidon soil.”

  “Not my orders,” Trevor said. “We harry, we do not kill.” He sensed the anger of the men. “I also didn’t want our forest burning. Do you think the West Moretons care if Red Forest is burned down?”

  “No,” a few of the company said.

  “We have more to protect than the citizens of Presidon.”

  Sergeant Sender laughed, but Trevor didn’t like the tone of it. “When have we done that? We play our games with the bandits in the woods and the odd invading force from the south and leave the peasantry to their own devices.”

  “We played a game tonight and won. Master Sergeant Boxster’s group was captured, and they escaped,” Trevor said.

  “You saved them,” one of the men said.

  “We are a company working to make sure we are successful and keep everyone alive as much as we can.”

  “Like Crookwell and Polehand?” Sergeant Angry Sender said.

  The derision in Sender’s voice now showed why the man took the first name that he had. Trevor was ready to strike him down for insubordination, but he restrained himself.

  “Polehand tried to kill me, and Crookwell almost assassinated Master Sergeant Boxster,” Trevor said.

  “All we have is your word. Thick as thieves, you are, a foreigner and a disgraced prince,” Sender said.

  Trevor realized that he had a mutiny on his hands.

  “You saw my helmet, and some of you saw the arrow,” Trevor said. “Do you need my word for that?”

  “There is still Sergeant Crookwell,” one of the men said.

  There were mumblings of agreement. Trevor tried to count the for and against but couldn’t in the poorly lit darkness. He thought he had returned to camp a hero for saving Boxster and his men, but now he faced a fight within his group. How could the great god Dryden have it in for him? It was something he’d have to ask Brother Yvan, but that was in the future. In the now, Boxster and he were facing a mutiny of soldiers, not the wrath of Dryden.

  “I command you to stop your bickering,” Trevor said.

  “You’ve already lost them,” Boxster said. “I think we will have to fight our way out of this.” The sergeant drew his sword, and Trevor followed.

  “Do you want a taste of my sword?” Trevor asked.

  Sergeant Sender laughed. “Taste it yourself. You are going to die either way. We’ve just been waiting for the right time now that we’ve engaged the enemy.”

  “Who sent you?” Boxster asked. “Brachia or one of Trevor’s relatives?”

  Sender furrowed his brow. “Brachia? Is that who Crookwell was working for? He never told me. Let’s at ’em, boys.”

  The fighting began. At first, Trevor tried to keep from killing his men. In the end, he and Boxster had to fight for their lives at the expense of the company. Boxster appeared to have caught up to his limit as the master sergeant wasn’t all the way recovered from his earlier wounds. Trevor was more than tired, but he didn’t have the option to rest until the last man was down. Five of the men had backed away, throwing down their swords, not wanting to get involved.

  For better troops than his first two patrols, these men didn’t put up as good a fight, and soon Trevor and Boxster were the last men standing, looking at the five who had refused to fight. The soldier who had healing experience was one of them.

  “See if you can save any of them,” Trevor said to the healer.

  Boxster had already moved to examine the bodies.

  “I don’t see why we couldn’t use the same story about them as what they were going to tell about us. The West Moretons found the company, and we barely got away,” Trevor said. “At least they wouldn’t die with so much disgrace.”

  “At this point, I can’t disagree,” Boxster said, chest heaving. “None of them are alive. Let’s bury them and get out of here.”

  “Not so fast,” said a voice in the forest. “Drop your swords. You are surrounded.”

  Boxster planted the point of his sword into the soft floor of the forest. “You can see what we’ve done to more than ten men.”

  At least twice that number stepped into the clearing.

  Boxster pushed the hilt of his sword, so it fell to his feet. “I thought you were bluffing.”

  The leader laughed. “You, too, Prince Arcwin.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “We’ve always known who you are, but we aren’t behind any attempts on your life. Come with us.”

  “Do we have a choice?” Boxster asked.

  “One always has a choice. Do you want to know what the alternative is?” the leader said.

  “Not at this time,” Trevor said. “Be careful with my sword. I’ll want it back.”

  Trevor’s comment made the men in the group laugh.

  “What about these men?” Trevor asked.

  “Send them away quickly, or they won’t survive the night.”

  The men cowered in a group.

  “Bury the dead and leave. Tell General Greenwood exactly what happened. Master Sergeant Boxster and I will accompany the West Moretons to save your lives.” Trevor’s orders sounded good, but he suspected the story told to the general would be quite different from what actually happened. Trevor sighed at the mess he was in. At least five of his company would survive.

  The West Moretons stayed while the men buried the dead from their company. Trevor and Boxster’s hands were bound, and they were pushed southward toward the West Moreton camp. Trevor doubted he would last the night.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ~

  S oldiers eyed Boxster and Trevor with suspicion as they entered the West Moreton camp. At least they had been allowed to ride their horses, even though their hands were tied and enemy soldiers held the reins. The camp was orderly and extensive. This was no army on the run, he thought.

  Trevor thought about using his knees to command the horse to break away, but the chances of that working were slim, and without any weapons, he wouldn’t be able to fight back if caught. He wanted to talk to Boxster, but the gags made whispering mostly unintelligible.

  At least the soldiers weren’t throwing rocks, although if their expressions could kill, Trevor and Boxster’s bodies would have been dried husks. They were led to the center of the place along a broad avenue flanked by orderly rows of tents. Trevor had always thought that the West Moretons were an undisciplined rabble, but that wasn’t the case, at least by observing how they set up their camp.

  An older man with long sideburns and chin whiskers stepped out of the tent
with a uniform tunic over a nightshirt. “What have we here?”

  “They did our work for us,” the leader of the men who captured Trevor and Boxster said. “This is Prince Arcwin, and I am thinking, his second in command.”

  “Help them down, but keep them bound,” the West Moreton officer said. He stared up into Trevor’s eyes. “You are a tall one. Someone, take off the gag.”

  A soldier rushed forward and took the gags off Boxster and Trevor.

  “Which of you attacked my sentries?”

  “Whom am I addressing?” Trevor asked.

  “Ah, you must be the prince. You are so mannerly. I am Commander Audacious Periwinkle.”

  “Most of my men attacked sentries, but I was told no deaths occurred.”

  Periwinkle thrust out his lower lip and plucked at it. “No one was killed, and I found that curious.”

  “I didn’t want you too antagonized,” Trevor said. “An injured man brings pity, but a dead man brings revenge.”

  Periwinkle laughed in Trevor’s face. “Sounds like Dryden’s drivel. Any attack elicits revenge for us.”

  “If we killed your sentries, wouldn’t your band of men have killed my sergeant and myself out of hand?”

  “No. You are naive, but then you are very young. You may have some value as a hostage.”

  Trevor laughed. “I just finished fending off an assassination ordered by someone in Tarviston castle. I doubt my worth is very great.”

  Boxster sighed just loud enough for Trevor to realize his mistake. The more his worth, the longer his life, and he had just said his life was worthless. Trevor hoped his error wasn’t fatal. There wasn’t anything he could do but stand and hope the commander gave him more information. He had read in the scouting journal that enemy intelligence was the currency that made a scout valuable. Periwinkle’s attention turned to Boxster. “And you are?”

  “Master Sergeant Desolation Boxster, sir.”

  “At least you treat me with respect. Tell me of your conflict with our sentries.” Periwinkle turned his gaze to Trevor before he narrowed his eyes, looking at Boxster.